Category Archives: Showcase

Best of Best WordPress Tutorials of 2017 on WPBeginner

27.12.2017best of 2017, best of best 2017, best wordpress tutorials, best wordpress tutorials of 2017, ShowcaseEditorial Staff

2017 is about to come to an end and what a great year it has been. We want to thank all of your for your continued support of WPBeginner over the past 8 years of our existence. To continue our tradition, in this article we will look back at 2017 to highlight the best of best WordPress tutorials on WPBeginner and share the success that our team had in 2017.

Best of Best WordPress Tutorials of 2017 on WPBeginner

WPBeginner Recap 2017 by Syed Balkhi

2017 has been an amazing year for me both personally and professionally. WPBeginner website set new traffic records, our team grew to over 40 people, and our revenue from our premium WordPress plugins saw significant growth as well.

In last year’s recap, I set a goal that I wanted to reach 100,000 subscribers on YouTube by the end of 2017. We didn’t quite reach that milestone. At the time of writing this article, we have over 79,000 subscribers and over 10 million video views. I am proud that our videos have improved significantly, and we will be putting even more focus on videos in 2018. If you haven’t done so already, I would really appreciate it if you subscribe to our YouTube channel, so we can reach the 100,000 subscriber mark in 2018.

As for personal life, I’m really enjoying fatherhood. Solomon is 1 year old now, and he learned how to walk earlier this year. It’s been an amazing journey watching him grow and learn all sorts of new things. He has already been to two WordCamps. I think he was the youngest attendee at WordCamp U.S this year. Below is a picture of our family, since I know many of you often ask for it.

Balkhi Family 2017

I took a complete break from writing on my personal blog, so I can spend maximum time with family. I have been clearing my tasks, so I can start blogging there again next year.

2017 was a great year for WPBeginner’s family of products.

Last year, we launched WPForms, with a goal to make the most beginner friendly WordPress contact form plugin. We have both the free version and premium version.

Thanks to your support, WPForms has taken the market by storm. It’s being used on over 800,000 websites now and has a 4.9 out of 5 star rating.

We completed the phase 1 revamp of MonsterInsights, the Google analytics plugin we acquired from Yoast last year. In phase 1, our goal was to add proper tracking to every area of your WordPress site and send that data to your Google Analytics. Our phase 2 update will be going out soon which will significantly improve the reporting dashboard. Our goal is to bring back helpful data inside WordPress dashboard to help you make data-driven decision.

Our flagship product, OptinMonster, continued to push the limits in 2017. We launched version 4.0 which came with powerful features like sub-accounts, user permission control, activity logs, custom branding and a new campaign creation workflow. We also added powerful targeting features like InactivitySensor, shareable MonsterLinks, campaign sound effects, and our native Shopify app. We also did a complete redesign of our website.

If you’re not using OptinMonster, then you’re losing subscribers every day. It is the one plugin that every website should have.

We also completely redesigned our corporate, Awesome Motive website. It’s really cool, you should check it out. We’re hiring for a lot of different positions, so don’t forget to browse our career page.

If you want to keep up with more than just WPBeginner, then you can always follow me on Twitter (@syedbalkhi) where I tweet about our other projects, marketing tips, and tons of other cool things.

Now let’s take a look at the best of WPBeginner in 2017.

Best of WPBeginner in 2017

We wrote many helpful WordPress tutorials through out 2017. Here are some of our favorites.

January

How to create your own customize short url for your blog – We started the year with a highly requested tutorial on how to create customized short URLs like wpbeg.in that we use.

How to do lead generation in WordPress like a pro – In this article, we discussed why lead generation is important and how you can totally do it on your own like an expert.

What are WordPress plugins? And how do they work? – In this beginner’s guide, we talked a bit about WordPress plugins. Targeted at absolute beginners, this article explains the concept of WordPress plugins as apps for your website and how they work by hooking into your WordPress.

How to add a customer reviews page in WordPress – In this article we show you the easiest way to add customer reviews and testimonials on your business website.

February

How to properly move from Weebly to WordPress – Before this article, it was quite painful to move a website from Weebly to WordPress. We decided to develop a handy tool that will allow you to easily export and import your Weebly site into WordPress. This article has step by step instructions on how to do it.

How to install Google Analytics in WordPress for beginners – Google Analytics is the best free analytics tool in the market. In this beginner’s guide, we showed you how to easily install Google Analytics in your WordPress site.

How to merge two WordPress sites together without losing SEO – Did you buy a new website or just want to merge two of your sites together to better focus? This step by step guide shows you how to properly merge two WordPress sites without losing SEO.

32 extremely useful tricks for the WordPress functions file – This article is the one you want to bookmark because it contains a lot of handy WordPress snippets to use in your functions.php file.

March

5 Best WordPress LMS plugins compared (pros and cons) – WordPress is widely used by people and organizations who want to sell courses or use WordPress as their Learning Management System or LMS. In this article, we compared the top WordPress LMS plugins with pros and cons.

How much does it really cost to build a WordPress website – We are often asked by users about how much would it cost them to build a WordPress site. In this detailed article, we break down the prices and tell you how much it would cost to build different types of WordPress sites and how to reduce your costs.

25 legit ways to make money online blogging with WordPress – Another one of the most requested tutorials of 2017. It’s not a get rich quick schemes type article. But if you’re willing to work hard, then this article shares some of the ways to make money blogging.

How to display the last updated date of your posts in WordPress – A lot of you have asked us how do we display the last updated date on our articles. This article shows you exactly how to do that.

April

5 Best WordPress membership plugins compared – There are many WordPress membership plugins in the market with similar features. In this article, we compared the top WordPress membership plugins to figure out how they stack up against each other.

28 most frequently asked questions by WordPress beginners – As the largest free WordPress resource site, we get a lot of questions from beginners. In this article, we answered some of the most frequently asked questions by WordPress beginners.

How to let users filter posts and pages in WordPress – This is a very sophisticated plugin tutorial that allows you to add neat sorting and filtering option your WordPress site.

How to add an author’s photo in WordPress – Want to add author bio and photo at the end of each post? This is the tutorial that you need. It’s simple and easy (no coding needed).

May

55+ Most Wanted WordPress Tips, Tricks, and Hacks – The best thing about WordPress is that it can be easily customized into doing different things. We compiled a mega list of the most useful WordPress tips, tricks, and hacks that you can try.

5 best WordPress firewall plugins compared – Firewall plugins for WordPress block bad bots, malware, and malicious attacks on your website. In this article, we compared the top 5 WordPress firewall plugins with their pros and cons.

25 Interesting facts about WordPress (infographic) – In this article, we researched and compiled a list of the most interesting facts about WordPress. We then created a beautiful infographic so that you can easily share them.

How to optimize your WordPress database with one click – Optimizing your database cleans up unwanted data which reduces database size and can improve overall website performance. This is a handy tutorial that you should use at least once a year.

June

How to track outbound links in WordPress – Many of our users wanted to know how to track outbound links on their websites. These are the links that take users away from your site. In this article, we showed you how to easily track outbound links in WordPress using Google Analytics.

How WordPress actually works behind the scenes (infographic) – Curious about what goes on inside WordPress core when someone visits your website? In this article, we gave you a behind the scene tour of how WordPress works with a beautiful infographic.

How to add custom meta boxes in WordPress posts and post types – In this tutorial we showed how to creare custom meta boxes to use in your WordPress posts and custom post types.

WordPress.com vs WordPress.org (Comparison Chart) – We updated a popular article on our site with a brand new infographic and comparison table.

How to add two-factor authentication in WordPress (for free) – You probably have already noticed that many popular sites offer two-factor authentication to improve security. This tutorial walks you through how to add it in WordPress.

July

How to easily add custom code in WordPress (without breaking your site) – Normally, users paste code snippets from web in their theme’s functions.php file or a site-specific plugin. In this article, an easier method for beginners to easily add custom code in WordPress.

13 crucial WordPress maintenance tasks to perform regularly – As a self-hosted WordPress site owner, you are responsible for the maintenance of your website. In this article, we created a handy checklist of crucial maintenance tasks that you need to perform regularly.

10 best WordPress plugins for podcasters – WordPress is used by the top podcasters. In this article, we shared the best WordPress plugins for podcasters that will help you easily manage and grow your podcast.

12 signs that your WordPress site is hacked – We are often asked about what are some signs that indicate a WordPress site has been hacked. Here are 12 that you should watch out for.

August

How much does a custom WordPress theme cost? – Another one of the most often asked questions is how to get a custom WordPress theme and how much it would actually cost. In this article, we talk about the cost of getting a custom WordPress theme made specifically for your website.

How to manually update WordPress plugins via FTP – Sometimes you may not be able to update a WordPress plugin from the admin area, in that case you will need to use FTP to update it. In this step by step guide, we show you how to manually update WordPress plugins via FTP.

Best WordPress landing page plugins compared – Want to build custom landing pages for your marketing campaigns? In this article, we compared the top WordPress landing page plugins and their pros and cons.

How to style each post WordPress post differently – A handy resource for theme development when you want to style each post differently.

September

How to add a slide out contact form in WordPress – Slide out contact forms divert user’s attention to the contact with the slide in animation. It helps you generate more leads and sales. In this step by step guide, we showed you how to easily add a slide out contact form in WordPress.

7 Best WordPress CDN services (Compared) – Content delivery network or CDN help you serve static cache from different servers and locations. This boosts your site’s speed and decreases page load time. In this article, we have hand-picked the best CDN services that you can use with your WordPress site.

How to create a pay-per-view site with WordPress – Want to build a pay-per-view site to earn money from your content? In this guide, we show you how to easily create a pay per view site with WordPress.

How to find which WordPress theme a site is using – Often we get emails from readers asking us for help in finding the exact theme that a specific website is using. This article shows you how to easily find out which WordPress a specific website is using.

October

How to properly disable Google AMP in WordPress – In this article, we talk about how to and why you should disable Google AMP in WordPress.

Ultimate guide to creating a WordPress membership site – Want to a build a membership website but dont know where to start? In this step by step guide, we showed how to easily create a fully-functional WordPress membership website.

7 best WordPress ad management plugins and solutions – Many WordPress powered websites rely on advertising for revenue. In this article, we shared the top WordPress ad management plugins and solutions that will help you maximize your ad revenue.

November

How to track user engagement in WordPress with Google Analytics – Want to learn how users spend their time while visiting your website? In this article, we showed how to track user engagement in Google Analytics.

Evolution of WordPress user interface (2003 – 2017) – Want to see how WordPress looked in its early days? In this article, we showed you how the WordPress user interface evolved over the years.

How to appear in Google Answer boxes with your WordPress site – Google Answer boxes highlight the best answer to question in search results by putting it at top in an answer box. In this article, we talked about how you can improve your content to easily appear in Google answer boxes with your WordPress posts.

How to restrict media library access to user’s own uploads in WordPress – By default, WordPress allows authors to see all images on your site’s media library. This could be problematic if you invite a lot of guest authors. Here’s how to fix that.

December

How to add a mega menu on your WordPress site (step by step) – You might have seen popular sites like Buzzfeed, Starbucks, etc have interactive mega navigation menus on their sites. Here’s a tutorial how to add a mega menu on your website.

How to accept Bitcoin payments in WordPress – More and more ecommerce websites are now accepting Bitcoin payments along with traditional payment methods. In this article, we show you how to easily accept Bitcoin payments in WordPress.

How to use SMTP server to send WordPress emails – Many shared WordPress hosting providers don’t have their servers properly configured to send out WordPress emails. This troublesome as you may not be able to get important notifications or even password recovery emails. In this article, we show you how to use SMTP server to send WordPress emails.

How and why you should leave reviews on WordPress – Many WordPress plugins and themes need your encouragement to continue the project, particularly the free ones. In this article, we discussed how and why you should leave reviews on WordPress projects like plugins and themes.

These were some of the best WordPress tutorials on WPBeginner in 2017. We hope that you liked them.

We would like to thank all WPBeginner users, who visited our website, gave feedback, left comments, and shared it with others. We are truly very thankful. We look forward to add more useful WordPress tutorials in 2018.

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.

The post Best of Best WordPress Tutorials of 2017 on WPBeginner appeared first on WPBeginner.

19 Best WordPress Themes for Podcasters

22.12.2017best wordpress themes, Podcasting, podcasting themes for wordpress, Showcase, WordPress ThemesEditorial Staff

Are you looking for perfect WordPress theme for your podcast website? We have an article on how to start a podcast in WordPress, and several of our readers ask for best podcast theme suggestions. In this article, we have hand-picked some of the best WordPress themes for Podcasters.

WordPress themes for podcasters

Building a Podcast Website with WordPress

WordPress is a popular website builder among podcasters all over the world. Mainly, due to its flexibility and ease of use.

There are two different types of WordPress, and it’s very important that you choose the right one. WordPress.com which is a hosted platform, and WordPress.org which is also known as self-hosted WordPress. For details see our comparison of WordPress.com vs WordPress.org.

We recommend using self-hosted WordPress.org to build your podcast website. It gives you access to all powerful WordPress features out of the box.

To start your website with self hosted WordPress, you will need a domain name (e.g. wpbeginner.com). This will be your website’s address on the internet. You’ll also need a WordPress hosting account, this is where your website’s files are stored.

We recommend using Bluehost. They are one of the largest hosting companies in the world and an officially recommended WordPress hosting provider.

Next, you will need to set up your podcast. For detailed instructions see our step by step guide on how to start a podcast.

That being said, let’s take a look at some of the best WordPress themes for podcasters.

1. Satchmo

Satchmo is a WordPress podcasting theme designed specifically for podcasters. It features a gorgeous design with a large background image, call to action button, and the latest episode widget.

It has many podcasting related features and a beautiful episode player that looks excellent on all devices. It also comes with full support for drag and drop page builder plugins and works with all top WordPress plugins for podcasters.

2. Ultra

Ultra is an all-purpose WordPress theme that comes packed with ready-made designs and 1-click install. It also includes a powerful page builder to edit any page or create your own designs.

Ultra comes with features that will make your podcast stand out. It includes a beautiful audio player that goes along with your theme effortlessly. For easier set up, it has 1-click demo importer and custom theme settings page.

3. Gumbo

Gumbo is another excellent WordPress theme for podcasters. It is designed to leave a lasting first impression on your audiences with a stunning and modern design.

It comes with full support for Blubrry podcast hosting and the PowerPress podcasting plugin. It also supports self-hosted as well as external embeds from any host including Soundcloud, YouTube, Vimeo, and more.

4. Aesthetic

Aesthetic is a beautifully designed WordPress theme for podcasters and bloggers. It offers multiple listing styles for posts which would work great for your podcast episodes.

It includes easy editing with page builder and comes with quick setup options like 1-click importer and theme options panel. Inside you will also find a beautiful audio player that works great for self-hosted media files for your podcast.

5. Pepper+

Pepper+ is a multi-purpose WordPress theme suitable for any kind of website including podcasts. It takes a modular approach to design and allows you to just drag and drop items on a page to create beautiful designs.

It comes with multiple ready-made website designs with demo content that you can install with 1-click and then edit those pages with your own content. It is super easy to use and works nicely with essential WordPress plugins including any podcasting plugins you may want to use.

6. Music

As the name suggests, Music is a WordPress theme designed for musicians, artists, radio shows, and podcasts. It comes with a gorgeous fullscreen background image and a full width audio player at the bottom.

It is super easy to use and includes everything you will need for your podcasting website. It has a super flexible drag and drop builder that allows you to easily create unlimited designs on your own. Theme set up is quite straight forward, you can also import demo content to make setup even easier.

7. Oscillator

Oscillator is a powerful yet easy to use WordPress theme for musicians and podcasts. It comes with a beautiful streaming audio player that looks great on mobile devices as well.

It includes built-in sections to add sliders, artists, discography, events, photo galleries and videos. It has a drag and drop home page with custom widgets for content discovery and social media integration.

8. Lenscap

Lenscap is a beautifully designed WordPress theme for magazines and all media-rich websites including podcasts. Its homepage features a highly customizable content carousel that allows you to showcase the best of your podcast at the top.

It is super easy to use and all theme options are neatly organized. It works out of the box and comes with a handy guide to help you setup your website. It is eCommerce ready and can also be used to add an online store.

9. Monochrome

If you are looking for a minimalist WordPress theme, then you should take a look at Monochrome. It features lots of white space with elegant typography that makes your content stand out.

It is built on top of Genesis theme framework, which is great for performance and speed. It has a customizable header, easy to set up home page with multiple widget ready areas where you can place an audio player widget.

10. Oxium

Oxium is a WordPress theme for music, artists, bands, and podcasts. It features a unique design with a narrow sidebar and navigation menus on the left and your most important content to the right.

It includes audio streaming player and custom sections to add artists, video galleries, photos, and more. With its widgetized homepage, powerful options, and custom widgets it is quite easy to setup and use.

11. Medias

Medias is a powerful WordPress theme for blogs, podcasts, and personal websites. It comes with multiple layouts and styles to display your posts and other content.

Other notable features include mega menu, slider plugin, custom header, and Google fonts. It can also be used to create multilingual WordPress sites with WPML.

12. Amplify

Amplify is a WordPress theme for musicians, artists, podcasts, and other websites that use audio content. It comes with a companion plugin to easily add audio player, discography, artists, and more.

It has templates for event pages, video galleries, photo gallery, and albums and tracks. It is compatible with Beaver Builder which allows you to create your own custom page layouts if you need.

13. Obsidian

Looking for a more modern and stylish WordPress theme, then you will like Obsidian. This stylish WordPress theme features a dark color scheme with fullscreen background and an audio player.

It includes full support to display audio playlists as well as video content on your website. Theme setup is managed with live customizer which allows you to see your changes as you edit your website.

14. Designer

Designer is basically a WordPress portfolio theme for any kind of artists and designers. What makes it suitable for podcasting is that it comes with beautiful templates to display your audio content, which is great for podcasting websites.

It is super user-friendly and only comes with options that you’ll need. It is compatible with all podcasting plugins and comes with templates for contact form, video portfolio, blog page, and more.

15. Promenade

Promenade combines minimalism with style in beautifully crafted WordPress theme. Designed for audio content, musicians, and bands, this theme is perfect for serious podcasts as it allows users to focus more on content than other elements.

Other notable features include full support for audio video content, related posts, Google Fonts and TypeKit support, gigs, and full-width page template to use with any page builder plugin.

16. Nayma

Nayma is a multi-purpose WordPress theme that can handle any kind of content and make it look beautiful. It is suitable for podcasts and comes with an audio post format that works great for podcast episodes.

It is eCommerce ready and also supports multilingual websites. It has built-in templates for portfolio, galleries, adding a contact form, and more. For easier setup it ships with multiple readymade designs with content that you can just replace with your own.

17. Tracks

If you are looking for a free theme, then take a look at Tracks. It features a dark, simple, and minimalist design that makes it great for publish both text and audio content.

Notable features include social media icons, search bar, comment display controls, premium layouts, and more. It is easy to use and all theme options can be accessed under live customizer.

18. Elegant

Elegant is a beautifully crafted WordPress theme to beautifully display all sorts of content with a distraction free layout. It is suitable for personal blogs, podcasters, and magazine sites that need a simple design.

It includes beautiful typography, unlimited layouts, portfolio section, custom header, page templates, and multiple color schemes. It has a powerful page builder to take your website to the next level.

19. Dixie

Dixie is specifically made WordPress theme for podcasters. It features a stunning homepage design with fullscreen background and episode player. It comes loaded with podcasting related features that will make it easy for you to quickly setup your podcast website.

It also supports all popular podcasting plugns as well as top WordPress page builder plugins. It includes multiple layout choices, podcast hosts page, and Newsletter signup form. It has plenty of theme options and the whole theme is translation ready.

We hope this article helped you find the best WordPress theme for podcasting. You may also want to see our ultimate step by step WordPress SEO guide for beginners.

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.

The post 19 Best WordPress Themes for Podcasters appeared first on WPBeginner.

24 Best WordPress Themes for Art Gallery

15.12.2017art gallery wordpress themes, best wordpress themes, Showcase, WordPress ThemesEditorial Staff

Are you looking for the best WordPress themes for art galleries? Most WordPress themes for business and personal websites do not match the creativity and features required for an art gallery website. In this article, we have hand-picked some of the best WordPress themes for art galleries.

Best WordPress themes for art galleries

Making an Art Gallery Website with WordPress

WordPress is the most popular website builder in the world. It comes in two flavors, WordPress.com which is a hosted solution and WordPress.org also known as self-hosted WordPress.

We recommend using WordPress.org due to the flexibility it offers. It also gives you access to all WordPress features out of the box (See our comparison of WordPress.com vs WordPress.org).

You’ll need a domain name and a WordPress hosting account to create an art gallery website.

We recommend using Bluehost. They are one of the officially recommended WordPress hosting providers and one of the largest hosting companies in the world.

After signing up for your hosting account, you can checkout our guide on how to make a website for step by step setup instructions.

That being said, let’s take a look at some of the best WordPress themes for art galleries. All these themes are mobile friendly.

1. Reel Story

Reel Story is a beautifully crafted WordPress theme for creative professionals, artists, and galleries. It is designed to showcase your work and put it front and center. It includes a beautiful portfolio section, photo galleries, and support for video embeds.

It comes with a powerful visual page builder plugin and has a custom theme options panel for quicker setup.

2. Ultra

Ultra is an all purpose WordPress theme suitable for art galleries, artists, photographers, and other creative professionals. It comes with several ready-made designs that you can install with 1-click. It also includes an easy to use page builder to edit your pages.

It has portfolio section to beautifully display art work, also included are gorgeous templates for photo galleries with multiple layouts.

3. Indigo

Indigo is a beautifully designed WordPress theme with a modular approach to design. It is suitable for all kind of websites including art galleries, artists, and creative spaces.

It includes beautiful modules to add photo galleries, portfolio, contact form support, testimonials, and more. It is quite easy to setup and includes multiple designs that can be installed with 1 click.

4. Meteor

Meteor is an excellent WordPress portfolio and resume theme suitable for art galleries and exhibitions. It includes a powerful portfolio post type with masonry, grid, and carousel layouts. Each portfolio item has its own page with beautiful galleries and descriptions.

It is super easy to use and designed to work out of the box with minimal settings to configure. Inside you will also find a getting started guide that will walk you through theme setup.

5. Freelo

Freelo is an elegantly designed WordPress theme for art galleries, exhibitions, and artists. It comes in multiple color schemes and you can use your own colors as well. It has an beautifully designed portfolio section with multiple styles.

Other notable features include support for Google Fonts, multiple page templates, unlimited sidebars, and an easier theme options panel.

6. Coastline

Coastline is a powerful WordPress portfolio theme with a unique design that puts your artwork front and center. It features a masonry grid layout on the front page with a static sidebar on the left.

It also includes a portfolio section, photo galleries, custom widgets, and social media integration. All theme options are neatly organized under live theme customizer.

7. Shutter

Shutter is feature-rich WordPress theme for photography websites and art galleries. It comes with 5 demo designs with dummy content that can be installed with 1-click.

It is SEO friendly and includes tons of features like Google fonts, portfolio, galleries, beautiful sliders, and more. Theme settings are super easy with a custom theme options panel.

8. Float

Float is a modern WordPress theme with beautiful parallax background design. Suitable for art galleries looking for a modern and futuristic look for their website.

It includes an intuitive drag and drop page builder, multiple styles and layouts, page templates, custom widgets, and social media integration. Theme demo can be installed with 1-click installer and customizations can be made using custom theme settings page.

9. Hellomouse

Designed specifically for creative works, Hellomouse is a beautiful WordPress portfolio theme. Optimized to create a great first impression, its homepage features a welcome message with contact information, followed by your portfolio items displayed in a grid.

For customizations, it has more than 60 options with in live theme customizer. It comes with custom widgets, drag and drop homepage settings, social media integration, and more. It works with all top WordPress plugins.

10. Peak

Looking for an elegant and feature rich theme for your art gallery? Check out Peak. This beautifully designed WordPress theme is perfect for photography, artists, and other creative works.

It comes with multiple gallery layouts, page templates, multiple styles, slideout widgets, page title banner and more. It is powerful yet quite easy to use with detailed theme options that help you walk through setup.

11. North

If you are looking for a minimalist WordPress theme for your art gallery, then take a look at North. This beautifully designed WordPress theme comes with a built-in portfolio content type and gorgeous templates to display it.

It includes multiple ways to display your galleries and portfolio items. It is super easy to use and all theme options are available under customizer with live preview.

12. Creativo

As the name suggests, Creativo is a WordPress theme for creative professionals, agencies, and galleries. This beautiful theme comes with multiple ready to use designs that you can install with one click.

It ships with a premium slider plugin and a visual page builder. It is WooCommerce ready and can also be used to add an online store to your website.

13. Eclection

Eclection features unique design with minimalist approach. It’s homepage displays a large fullscreen featured slider with a sidebar on the left.

It has a beautifully designed section to display your projects with a separate page for blog section. It is super easy to use and comes with tons of options that you can use to make it uniquely yours.

14. Inspiro

If videos play an important role in your art gallery, then you may want to take a look at Inspiro. This WordPress theme for videos comes with a featured video slider on top followed by your most important content.

This ecommerce ready theme comes with a custom theme options page for easier setup. It also includes photo galleries, custom widgets for social media and contact information, 5 demo designs, and a simple drag and drop page builder.

15. iRibbon Pro

iRibbon pro is an excellent WordPress theme featuring a retro vintage design. It comes in 4 color schemes including green, blue, red and teal blue. It has a built-in slider on top followed by a call to action section.

It includes portfolio and testimonials section, contact page template, phone number location, and multiple sidebar layouts for different sections of your website. It is super easy to use and comes with a custom theme settings area.

16. Corner

Corner is an excellent minimalist WordPress theme for creative works, art galleries, and artists. It features a narrow left sidebar with a large content area to showcase your projects.

It uses lots of white space and allow you to choose your own colors to use. It has a separate blog page, photo gallery templates, custom widgets, and it also supports WooCommerce to add an online store.

17. Eclipse

Eclipse is feature-rich yet very simple WordPress theme. It features beautiful typography with social icons and navigation menu on the top, followed by a large slider, boxes, and your recent content.

It also comes with Instagram widget, multiple layouts, and unlimited color choices. It works out of the box and it is super-easy to setup even for absolute beginners.

18. Ambiance

Built on top of the Genesis theme framework, Ambiance Pro is a beautiful WordPress theme with a minimal approach to design. Its homepage features a collapsed navigation menu, welcome message, and the grid layout of your latest work.

It has a widgetized homepage which allows you to drag and drop widgets to setup your homepage. You can customize theme settings using theme options page and live customizer.

19. True North

True North is an ideal WordPress theme for artists, photographers, and art galleries. It features a sticky navigation menu on top, a large full width header image, followed by your portfolio and other sections.

It comes with multiple layouts including filterable portfolio, grid, slideshow, and column listing. It is also packing tons of customization options that allow you to easily tweak theme settings and make it your own.

20. Parallax

If you are looking for a modern WordPress one-page theme, then Parallax would be an excellent choice. It uses highly engaging parallax background effects with vertical navigation menus.

It comes with portfolio, 11 header styles, smart layouts, custom header, slider, and animated bars and support for RTL languages. It comes with multiple demos and a super easy visual page builder that allows you to create your own custom WordPress layouts.

21. Atmosphere Pro

Atmosphere Pro is an all-purpose, minimalist style WordPress theme with lots of white space and beautiful typography. It is built on Genesis theme framework which makes it SEO friendly out of the box.

Most noteable features include customizable header, widgetized homepage, custom widgets, eCommerce support, and more. It works out of the box and you can use custom theme settings page and live customizer for additional changes.

22. Pepper+

Pepper+ is a modular WordPress theme with easy to use modules that you can just drag and drop and create any kind of website in minutes. You wouldn’t need to do that, as it already includes 6 ready-made designs that you can install instantly.

It has everything you would want from a premium WordPress theme. Most noteable features include sliders, visual page builder, Google Fonts, header layouts, Typekit fonts support, pricing tables, and more.

23. Verb

Verb is a beautifully crafted WordPress theme for artists, art galleries, and creative venues. It features a dark color scheme with bright accent colors to create a beautiful visual presentation.

It includes handsome designs for portfolio pages and individual projects. It uses crisp typography and works out of the box. It has minimal theme options so you don’t have to struggle setting up your website.

24. The Chatter

The Chatter is WordPress theme for artists, art magazines, galleries, and similar projects. It uses lots of white space for an open spacious layout for improved readability.

It has three slider styles, unlimited colors, beautiful header styles, multiple layouts, and a visual page builder. It also gives you access to 22 other themes that you can install. It can also be used to create multilingual WordPress websites with WPML.

We hope this article helped you find the best WordPress themes for art gallery. You may also want to see our guide on how to speed up WordPress and boost performance for beginners.

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.

The post 24 Best WordPress Themes for Art Gallery appeared first on WPBeginner.

22 Best WordPress Themes for Recipe Blogs

08.12.2017best wordpress themes, Showcase, wordpress food themes, wordpress recipe blog themes, wordpress recipe themes, WordPress ThemesEditorial Staff

Are you looking for the best WordPress themes for your recipe blog? Traditional blog themes lack the imagery needed to make your recipes stand out. In this article, we will show you the best WordPress themes for recipe blogs that you can try right away.

Best WordPress themes for recipe blogs

Making a Recipe Blog with WordPress

WordPress is the most easy to use website builder in the market. It is perfect for sharing recipes and creating engaging food related websites.

There are two different types of WordPress available. WordPress.com, which is a hosted platform built on top of WordPress, and then there is WordPress.org also known as self hosted WordPress. For details, see our comparison of WordPress.com vs WordPress.org.

We recommend using self-hosted WordPress.org because it gives you access to all the powerful WordPress features right out of the box.

You will need a WordPress hosting account and a domain name to start your own self-hosted WordPress website.

We recommend using Bluehost. They are one of the largest hosting companies in the world and an officially recommended hosting provider.

They have agreed to offer our users a 60% discount, a free domain, and a free SSL. A deal that you won’t get elsewhere.

After purchasing hosting, you can go ahead and install WordPress. Follow our guide on how to start a blog for step by step instructions.

Once you are all set up, it is time to choose a theme for your website. Let’s take a look at some of the best WordPress themes for recipe blogs.

Note: This list has both free and paid themes and all of them are mobile-responsive.

1. Gourmet

Gourmet is a powerful WordPress theme for food blogs, recipes, and restaurant websites. It is part of a larger pack of 23 ready-made websites that can be installed with 1-click. Each template is fully editable using an integrated drag and drop page builder.

It includes multiple WordPress sliders with different styles, multiple layouts, unlimited color choices, and more. It is super easy to use and includes a powerful theme options panel to setup your website.

2. Igloo

Igloo is another flexible and beautifully designed WordPress theme for a recipe blog, restaurant, or cafe. It features a beautiful modern design, elegant photo galleries, and built-in social media integration.

For restaurant websites, it has a menu management system and testimonial sections. It comes in multiple color schemes and you can change colors for individual pages as well. All theme options are easy to configure using theme customizer with live preview.

3. Molino

Molino is a gorgeous WordPress theme for sharing recipes or building a website for cafes, bakeries, and restaurants. It part of a massive all-purpose WordPress theme which includes several ready-made designs and quick 1-click installer.

All pages can be easily edited using WordPress editor or the integrated drag and drop page builder that comes free with the theme. It offers endless customization choices with tons of colors, layout styles, headers, navigation menu styles, and more.

4. Florentine

Florentine is an elegant and stylish WordPress theme for food and recipe blogs. It includes a dedicated recipe section allowing you to easily add properly formatted recipes to your website. Your users will also be able to instantly switch to the distraction free cooking mode.

It has built-in social sharing, easy customization, different styles and layout choices. All theme options are neatly organized under theme customizer which makes it quite easy to set up and use.

5. Foodie Pro

Built on Genesis theme framework, Foodie Pro is a well crafted WordPress theme for recipe blogs, food websites, health and nuitrition related niches. It features a fully widgetized modern layout allowing you to drag and drop items to setup your website.

It includes a custom theme options panel, live customizer support, custom headers, multiple page layouts, and more. It is highly optimized for speed and performance.

6. CupCake

CupCake is a stylish and cute WordPress recipe and food blog theme. It comes with a unique design that utilizes fun color schemes and a modern layout for presentation.

It includes drag and drop elements to setup your homepage. Inside you will find sections to add portfolio items, featured products, sliders, and call to actions. It can also be used to add an online store to your website.

7. Daily Dish

Daily Dish is a modern WordPress theme for food and recipe websites. It is built on Genesis, and features a two column layout with a focus on beautiful typography and elegant display of images.

It comes with an easy to use theme options panel, customizable header, multiple page templates and widget ready areas. It is eCommerce ready and can be easily used to add a shop section to your website.

8. Foodica

Foodica is a beautiful magazine style WordPress theme for food blogs. It features a modern design and comes in 6 color schemes to choose from.

It includes easy to use shortcodes to add recipe ingredients into your articles. It includes dedicated sections to display ad zones and banners to make money online. It includes a simple theme options panel and full live customization support.

9. Food4Soul

Food4Soul is another excellent option for a WordPress food or recipe theme. It features a modern design with a large header image on top followed by your social profiles and navigation menus.

It includes drag and drop elements to setup your homepage layout. Inside you will find easy sections to manage portfolio, add recent posts, contact form, Google Maps, and more. It is easy to setup and includes a custom theme options panel.

10. Narya

Narya is a magazine style WordPress theme for food and recipe websites. It comes with a dedicated recipe post format and a custom recipe plugin. It also comes with a premium slider and a layout builder plugin.

Other notable features include 6 homepage layouts, 6 gallery layouts, multiple header styles, custom colors and more. It is easier to setup and all theme options are neatly organized.

11. Foodie

Foodie is a WordPress theme built for chefs, food bloggers, and recipes. It includes a recipe post section with easy to add ingredients, instructions, and even videos. Users can also rate recipes and you can sort your highest rated recipes.

It uses a two column traditional blog layout with support for custom background and custom logo upload. It works out of the box and all theme options can be easily setup with live customizer.

12. Cuisine

Cuisine is a stylish WordPress theme made specifically for food and recipe websites. It ships with a custom recipe plugin that allows you to easily add and manage your recipes. Each recipe has its own dedicated recipe card which can be placed onto multiple pages or posts.

It includes two different layouts, multiple page templates and header styles. It includes custom widgets, unlimited color schemes, beautiful featured image, and more.

13. Food Recipes

If you are looking for a free WordPress theme for recipes, then check out Food Recipes. It is built on bootstrap framework and features a two column layout with right sidebar. The content area is also divided into a two column grid on the desktop and a single column layout on mobile.

It includes support for custom logo upload, social media menu, fullscreen background image, and more. It is quite easy to setup and can be easily used to quickly start a blog.

14. Savor

Savor is a fresh and clean WordPress food theme with lots of features for recipe blogs. It comes with multiple layout combinations in two and three column grid layouts.

It also includes a custom recipe card which can be added into any WordPress posts or pages. Other noteable features include a featured content slider, custom widgets, social media integration, unlimited colors, contact form support, and more.

15. Kale

If you are looking for a free, clean, and simple recipe theme, then take a look at Kale. This minimalist style WordPress theme features a traditional blog layout with all the basic features.

It comes with a special front page showcasing featured posts and a large highlight post. It also has the option to show a banner or a posts slider in the header, and includes full ecommerce and RTL support.

16. Artie

Artie is a highly customizable WordPress food blog theme. It comes in multiple colors with multiple layout combinations, widget ready areas, and different styles.

It includes support for photo galleries, video galleries, recipe shortcodes, icon fonts, and more. All theme options are neatly organized and quite easy to setup.

17. Pepper+

Pepper+ is an all-purpose WordPress theme with several turnkey designs including one for a food/recipe website. It takes a modular approach to design and comes with different modules that you can just drag and drop to create different layouts.

Pepper+ is ready for WooCommerce and can also be used to create multilingual websites. It offers beginner friendly user experience with simple 1-click installers and quicker theme setup.

18. Salt & Pepper

Salt and Pepper is an elegantly designed WordPress theme for food and recipe websites. It has a beautiful recipes section, which allows you to easily add recipes. It includes beautiful templates to display those recipes with category based filters.

For page editing it ships with a visual page builder and slider plugin. It is translation ready and can also be used on multilingual websites.

19. Tastefully

Tastefully is a modern WordPress blog theme for food lovers, restaurant reviews, and recipe websites. It features a large custom header followed by two-column layout with sidebar on the right.

Other features include custom author bio box, social sharing, large featured images, and crisp typography. It is quite simple and works out of the box with minimal setup.

20. Baseline

Baseline is a magazine style WordPress blogging theme. It features a beautiful featured content slider on top, which is followed by your most important content.

It focuses on gorgeous display of your images and crisp typography to offer an elegant user experience. It is quite simple to use and doesn’t include any clutter. Inside you will also find a theme-setup guide that will help you get started right away.

21. Yumblog

YumBlog is a powerful WordPress recipe theme that ships with a premium WordPress recipe plugin. It allows you to add, manage, and share recipes from your website. It can also be used to allow your users to add their own recipes.

It features a nice modern layout focusing on images make your food photos look amazing. It ships with Beaver Builder to easily create page layouts using drag and drop tools.

22. Flavour

Flavour is a well-crafted WordPress theme for restaurants, food, and recipes. It includes beautiful restaurant menus, food icons, custom colors, and custom fonts support.

It is super easy to setup with 1-click demo content installer and a fully integrated visual page builder. You can try different layouts and styles to create a truly unique experience for your website.

We hope this article helped you find the best WordPress themes for recipe blogs. You may also want to see our ultimate step by step WordPress SEO guide for beginners.

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.

The post 22 Best WordPress Themes for Recipe Blogs appeared first on WPBeginner.

21 Best Wedding WordPress Themes

01.12.2017best wordpress themes, Showcase, wedding wordpress themes, WordPress ThemesEditorial Staff

Are you looking for a wedding themes for your WordPress site? For wedding websites, you need a theme that can showcase the best moments of the event. In this article, we have picked some of the best WordPress wedding themes that you can use.

Best wedding themes for WordPress

Making a Wedding Website with WordPress

WordPress is a popular choice to build family blogs, events, and wedding websites. Mainly because it is so easy to use and manage.

There are two types of WordPress websites available. WordPress.com and WordPress.org which is also known as self hosted WordPress. See our article on the difference between WordPress.com and WordPress.org

We recommend using WordPress.org because it gives you freedom to use all WordPress features out of the box.

You will need a domain name and a WordPress hosting account to start a self-hosted WordPress website.

We recommend using Bluehost. They are one of the best WordPress hosting companies in the world and an official WordPress hosting provider.

Once you have purchased hosting, you are ready to install WordPress. Follow the step by step instructions in our guide on how to start a blog.

That being said, let’s take a look at some of the best WordPress wedding themes that you can install on your website.

1. Ultra

Ultra is an all-purpose WordPress theme including ready-made designs for all kind of websites. It includes beautiful template for Wedding websites, featuring full screen background images and elegant typography.

It includes our story section to introduce bride and groom, beautiful photo galleries, and an RSVP section. It comes with a powerful drag and drop page builder and super easy theme options panel to setup your website.

2. Just Married

Just Married is a gorgeous WordPress wedding theme. It features an elegant design with full screen background images, a single column homepage, and stunning image galleries.

It includes custom colors and comes with 4 color schemes. Inside you’ll also find sections to add groomsmen, bridesmaid, accommodation, reservations, contact form, and more.

3. Meridian Wedding

Meridian Wedding is a beautifully designed WordPress theme with stylish layout and built-in custom features. Its homepage features a full-width slider to display photos of the lucky couple on top with call to action buttons to RSVP and gift registry.

It includes beautiful photo galleries, RSVP form, location, date, and complete event scheduling system. It is easy to setup with theme customizer where you can see live preview of your website as you set up.

4. Inspiro

Inspiro is a WordPress theme designed to create a lasting impression. It is perfect for photography, video, and wedding websites. It includes beautiful video and photo galleries, full screen video backgrounds, and lightbox popup support for photos and videos.

It ships with a 1-click installer and 5 ready-made layouts including one for wedding websites. It comes with a simple drag and drop page builder to edit your pages. All theme options can be easily setup using live customizer.

5. Amore

Amore is a stylish WordPress wedding theme with a beautiful design to make your website standout. Its homepage features a fullscreen slider with animated event countdown.

It is easy to customize and allows you to create and use any color scheme you want. All theme options can be set up using theme customizer. It also comes with drag and drop page builder to create your own custom layouts.

6. Lense

Lense is a WordPress photography theme with a unique design that makes it perfect for wedding websites. Its homepage features a beautiful photo gallery with horizontal scrolling. It also allows you to add photos in columns, grid types, scrollers, and slideshows.

You can have different settings for each one of your galleries. It has unlimited colors, custom widgets, unique mobile experience, and easy customization.

7. Emma

Emma is an elegant and modest WordPress wedding theme. Featuring crisp typography, beautiful colors, and full screen images, this theme has all you’ll need for a beautiful wedding website.

It also includes an RSVP form and free plugins to add registry, social sharing, and Instagram features. It is translation ready and comes with an easy setup with demo data included.

8. Selfie

Selfie is an excellent choice for a WordPress wedding theme. Designed to showcase photographs beautifully, this theme comes with beautiful layout that looks stunning on all devices.

It has a collapsible navigation and sidebar that gets out of way on both mobile and desktop. It also has a separate blog section with touch enabled galleries. Theme setup is quite straight forward and most options work out of the box.

9. Nayma

Nayma is an all purpose WordPress theme with multiple several purpose built designs, including one for wedding websites. This wedding template features a large full screen image with your wedding announcement on top of it.

It has beautiful parallax background effects for different sections, gorgeous photo galleries, and an area to display event details like time, venue, schedule, and more. It is super easy to use and comes with modules that you can just drag and drop to adjust your design.

10. Wedding Band

Wedding Band is a free WordPress wedding theme with simple features and easier setup. It features a gorgeous full width slider on top followed by different sections.

All theme options are easy to setup using the live theme customizer. It also includes styling for adding contact form and a full-width page template that you can use with any WordPress page builder plugin.

11. Zoro

Zoro is another excellent choice for a WordPress wedding website. It features super sized photo galleries to showcase the best moments of the wedding day. You can change photo gallery layouts into different types of grids with two or three columns.

It includes 4 homepage samples, 4 header styles, unlimited colors, Google Fonts, and a visual page builder. Theme setup is easier with demo content importer and a custom theme options panel.

12. Truelove

Truelove is a simple and free WordPress theme to instantly create a beautiful wedding website. It includes a simple slider on top followed by different sections. Theme setup is done via customizer and allows you to add custom header, background, widgets, and navigation menus.

13. Shutter

Shutter is a powerful WordPress photography theme with stunning templates including a wedding website design. It puts your photographs in front and center and offers an elegant and highly engaging user experience.

It ships with multiple demos, layout choices, different layout combinations that you can mix and match, unlimited colors, and built-in social media integration. It ships with a beginner friendly landing page builder and easy theme installer.

14. Newlyweds

If you are looking for a classic elegance design, then take a look at Newlyweds. This free WordPress theme uses an old timey classic layout with subtle colors and beautiful typography. It uses Cormorant Garamond and Great Vibes fonts for the elegant crisp typography.

It includes an event countdown timer, beautiful photo galleries, bride and groom photos, and custom logo support. All theme options are super simple and can be easily setup using live theme customizer.

15. Modules

Modules is a well crafted all-purpose WordPress theme. It takes a modular approach to design which allows you to use built-in blocks to just drag and drop on a canvas to build beautiful pages.

It ships with 16 turnkey designs for different industries including photography, personal, and event websites. Apart from that it includes ready-made design elements that you can instantly add. It is very easy to use and customize and perfect for wedding websites.

16. Selkie

Selkie is a WordPress blogging theme built for photographs and it is perfect for wedding websites. It’s homepage features a large header image with a call to action button that you can use for RSVP for registry pages.

Selkie is full of options, it has two layout choices, multiple navigation menu styles, 10 different blog layouts, and more.

17. Memories

Memories is a stylish WordPress theme suitable for photographers, fashion, and lifestyle sites. Its design features a unique layout, which makes it a great choice for wedding websites. It comes with a beautiful gallery display to showcase the best of your photographs.

It works with all popular WordPress plugins so you will be able to add new features as you go. Theme setup is quite easy with tons of options.

18. Focussity

Focussity is a beautiful WordPress theme for wedding photographers. It includes a custom portfolio section with beautiful image galleries. It supports fullscreen header images and backgrounds.

It also comes with a drag and drop page builder to create your own layouts. Focussity is multilingual ready and comes with beautiful parallax effects and background video support.

19. Gallery Pro

Gallery Pro is an elegant and minimalist WordPress photography and lifestyle theme. It is built on top of Genesis theme framework, which is highly optimized for faster WordPress speed.

It offers a clean minimalist layout to showcase your wedding day with style. Theme features allow you to easily add customizable header, drag and drop layout, and use page templates to add blog section as well. It is super simple to use and most features work right out of the box.

20. Jen+Ben

Jen+Ben is a simple and beautifully designed WordPress theme for wedding websites. It features a large featured image on top, which can also be replaced with a slider. It comes with a set of companion plugins that you can enable to add features as you set up the theme.

It includes custom header styles, beautiful navigation, Google maps, contact form, and social media features. Inside you will find custom theme options panel that will guide you through setup.

21. Hitched

Hitched comes as part of an all-purpose WordPress mega theme. You will get not just a wedding theme, but also themes to build various other websites. It has a 1-click demo installer, which allows you to import content and then just replace items with your own wedding photographs and information.

Inside you’ll find all the usual features you’d expect from premium WordPress theme. Noteable features include sliders, photo galleries, contact form, translation and multilingual support, event management, and more.

We hope this article helped you find the best WordPress wedding themes for your website. You may also want to see our list of must have WordPress plugins for all websites.

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.

The post 21 Best Wedding WordPress Themes appeared first on WPBeginner.

Evolution of WordPress User Interface (2003 – 2017)

29.11.2017all wordpress versions, evolution of wordpress, Showcase, wordpress history, wordpress now and then, wordpress versions archiveEditorial Staff

WordPress user interface has evolved steadily since its first release in 2003. WordPress started out as a simple blogging platform and has now matured into a full-fledged CMS platform. In this article, we will take you to back in time to show the different stages in the evolution of WordPress user interface since 2003 until now.

Evolution of WordPress user interface since 2003

The Beginnings of WordPress

WordPress started out in 2003. Mainly because the development on an already popular blogging software b2/cafelog was discontinued by their main developers.

Two passionate users of b2/cafelog, Matt Mullenweg and Mike Little, decided to build a new platform on top of b2/cafelog. This is how WordPress was first released on 27th May, 2003. Learn more about the origin story of WordPress in our article on the history of WordPress.

Since then, there has been a total of 276 WordPress releases so far (November 2017). In this article, we will highlight the ones that introduced a big change in admin panel user interface.

WordPress 0.71 – (June 2003)

The landing page of WordPress 0.71 admin panel was directly the write post page. As you can see there was no dashboard.

Features were very limited, and it was kept simple. You could only assign one category to each post. This version of WordPress had a tedious installation method where you would have to change a lot of information manually.

WordPress 1.0.1 (Miles – 2004)

WordPress 1.0.1 Miles was released January 3, 2004

Starting this version, WordPress started naming its major releases after Jazz musicians. As you can see this release was named after a famous musician, Miles Davis.

In this version, WordPress stopped using the b2 file structure and moved toward its own style of filing structure. New features included multiple category selection, SEO friendly URL structure, comment moderation, new installer, and several other improvements.

WordPress 1.2 – Mingus (May 2004)

WordPress 1.2 Mingus User Interface

Named after Charles Mingus, WordPress 1.2 was a monumental release. One of the most important upgrades in this version was the introduction of “Plugins”.

Other notable changes were Sub categories, custom fields, thumbnail creation, post preview, encrypted passwords, and the ability to ping more than one service at a time.

WordPress 1.5 – Strayhorn (Feb 2005)

This version of WordPress was named after Billy Strayhorn. It showed the first glimpse of a new dashboard style. It didn’t use Ajax and was way slower than the WordPress we use today.

Another significant feature was the introduction of pages along side posts, allowing users to create static pages that were not part of their blog. This release also added support for installing multiple themes in a single WordPress installation.

WordPress 2.0 – Duke (Dec 2005)

WordPress 2.0 Duke

WordPress 2.0 brought a major uphaul to the WordPress admin interface. It had a large blue header on top a complete overhaul of the admin area. It was way faster than previous releases as it utilized Ajax to perform certain tasks.

This release also included a full WYSIWIG editor. Akismet was introduced as a plugin to combat with the growing comment spam problem. Some other notable features were image/file uploading, theme preview via thumbnail (screenshot.png), improved posting speed, new hooks for developers, and more.

WordPress 2.1 – Ella (Jan 2007)

WordPress 2.1

WordPress 2.1 Ella was the first release to introduce a new admin screen to manage comments. The comment management process was significantly improved as users were able to delete or approve comments without reloading admin screens.

WordPress 2.3 – Dexter (Sep 2007)

WordPress 2.3

This release didn’t drastically change WordPress user interface but added several significant improvements. For the first time WordPress improved native support to add tags to your posts.

It also introduced update notifications allowing WordPress core and plugins to show notifications when there is a new version available. This release also started auto-redirecting users to correct WordPress URL as defined in the settings.

WordPress 2.5 – Brecker (Mar 2008)

WordPress 2.5

For WordPress 2.5, the WordPress team collaborated with Happy Cog, a leading web design consultancy firm, to overhaul WordPress user interface. It was a major re-design or rather reimagining of WordPress how we use it today.

WordPress 2.5 Editor

The dashboard got much better as they added more useful information there. This was the first version where we saw one click upgrade for plugins which were in WordPress plugin directory. Much better visual editor and a built-in gallery was also included in this release.

Many of the core components of this redesign are still a major part of the software. However, its appearance quickly changed just 10 months later.

WordPress 2.7 – Coltrane (Dec 2008)

WordPress 2.7

WordPress 2.7 brought another major upgrade to the WordPress admin user interface. Users were now able to readjust WordPress dashboard elements. Screen options were introduced so that users can show and hide elements to meet their requirements.

Other notable features included automated installation for plugins through the WordPress admin panel. Reply to comments from the admin panel, threaded comments, sticky posts, keyboard shortcuts, comment paging, and more.

WordPress 2.9 – Carmen (Dec 2009)

WordPress 2.9 Image editing

WordPress 2.9 Plugin update screen

WordPress 2.9 didn’t change user interface but added several new features that integrated beautifully in the WordPress interface. One of these changes was a plugin update system, that allowed users to update their plugins to the newer version with a single click.

Another major change in the release was image editing features, which allowed users to crop, resize, rotate, scale, and flip images in WordPress.

WordPress 3.0 – Thelonious (2010)

WordPress 3.0

WordPress 3.0 Thelonious was a major WordPress upgrade which truly transformed WordPress from a blogging platform to a full fledged CMS. It introduced post types, taxonomies, custom backgrounds, headers, shortlinks, and navigation menus. It also started the tradition of introducing a new default theme each year, this new default theme was called Twenty Ten.

This release merged a WordPress sister project called WordPress MU into core WordPress itself. This feature is now known as WordPress multisite. The basic style of the admin interface was capable of adapting all these major changes without a significant overhaul of the admin area.

WordPress 3.1 – Django Reinhardt (2011)

WordPress 3.1

WordPress 3.1 continued adding feature to the robust WordPress user interface. With this new release, WordPress introduced the admin bar, post formats, and a better internal linking feature.

WordPress 3.3 – Sonny (2011)

WordPress 3.3 UI

Released in December of 2011, WordPress 3.3 came packed with features and improvements to existing WordPress UI. It added fly out menus for better navigation in the admin area, a revamped admin bar, drag and drop to upload media, and tool tips. See more features and screenshots of WordPress 3.3.

WordPress 3.5 – Elvin (2012)

WordPress 3.5

Mobile and high resolution devices were already becoming accessible to all users. WordPress 3.5 streamlined the user interface for modern retina display devices. This included upgraded icons and adaptive styles that looked great on any screen resolution. See more features and screenshots of WordPress 3.5.

WordPress 3.8 – Parker (2013)

WordPress 3.8 Admin UI

The appearance and basic style of WordPress UI wasn’t changed since 2008 and was way overdue for a major upgrade. The goal for this upgrade was to handle mobile devices more elegantly and make WordPress more accessible. After a ton of work, the new WordPress user interface was released with WordPress 3.8.

The new user interface which is still used (with minor enhancements) was mobile responsive, had more color schemes, used icon fonts, and Open Sans for typography.

WordPress 3.8 mobile

WordPress 3.9 – Smith (2014)

WordPress 3.9

WordPress kept improving the UI to handle new features. WordPress 3.9 made several enhancements it started using flat buttons in the post editor, drag and drop image uploads, gallery previews, and more. It also added live previews when adding widgets in theme customizer. See more features and screenshots of WordPress 3.9.

WordPress 4.0 – Benny (2014)

WordPress 4.0

The same year WordPress 4.0 was released. There was no major change in the UI. However, there were some cool changes that fit right into the existing WordPress admin look.

A new grid view for Media gallery was introduced with infinite scroll and smooth editing. See screenshots and features of WordPress 4.0.

WordPress 4.2 – Powell (2015)

WordPress 4.2

WordPress 4.2 came with a tiny but significant improvement in the admin area color scheme. The grays were given a slight blue hue and the blues were changed to pure blue with no red channel. See more features and screenshots of WordPress 4.2.

WordPress 4.5 – Coleman (2016)

Inline link editing in WordPress 4.5

WordPress 4.5 brough some improvements in the default WordPress visual post editor. A new inline link editing feature was introduced along with some new inline text shortcuts.

Responsive previews were added in theme customizer which allowed users to preview their theme desktop, tablet, and mobile without changing devices. For more features see our article on the release of WordPress 4.5 with screenshots.

WordPress 4.6 – Pepper (2016)

Shiny updates in WordPress 4.6

In WordPress 4.6, the core team decided to start using native fonts instead of loading Open Sans from Google servers. This release also streamlined updates, which allowed users to install, update, and delete plugins/themes without leaving a page.

WordPress 4.8 – Vaughan (2017)

Media Widgets introduced in WordPress 4.8

WordPress 4.8 introduced a new set of widgets to add media like images, audio, video, and rich text. It also added a new dashboard widget that displayed WordPress news and events. For more features and screenshots, see our overview of WordPress 4.8.

WordPress 4.9 – Tipton (2017)

New Theme browsing experience in WordPress 4.9

The last major release of WordPress for 2017 added more features to Theme Customizer. It added a new theme browsing and preview experience in customizer.

It also made code editing in custom CSS and theme/plugin editors much easier by adding syntax highlighting and auto-completion features.

The Future of WordPress User Interface

As you may have noticed that WordPress user interface hasn’t changed much since 2013. However WordPress itself has improved a lot since then with tons of new features, better performance, and improved security.

Today, the user interface feels a bit out-dated compared to the many other top website builders in the market.

But this is about to change.

Core WordPress developers are working on a project codenamed Gutenberg. This project will add drag and drop functionality to WordPress post and page editor. It will allow new users to drag and drop blocks into their website like they do in a page builder plugin.

Gutenberg

We are very excited about this new upcoming release, and will keep you updated through out the process.

We hope this article helped you see the evolution of WordPress user interface since its first release in 2003. You may also want to see our list of the top WordPress companies and businesses.

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.

The post Evolution of WordPress User Interface (2003 – 2017) appeared first on WPBeginner.

7 PayPal Alternatives for Freelancers to Collect Payments in WordPress

23.11.2017paypal alternatives, paypal in Wordpress, receive payments in WordPress, ShowcaseEditorial Staff

Are you looking for PayPal alternatives for freelancers to collect payments in WordPress? PayPal is one of the easiest platforms to collect payments on your website. However, it is not available in all countries and not all of your clients may want to use it. In this article, we will share some of the best PayPal alternatives for freelancers to collect payments in WordPress.

Best PayPal Alternatives for Freelancers to collect payments in WordPress

Why Look for PayPal Alternatives to Accept Online Payments

PayPal has made online transactions fast and hassle free. Allowing WordPress site owners to make money online by selling products and services.

However, there are certain issues with PayPal which leads to many searching for PayPal alternatives.

For example, there are a number of developing countries where PayPal does not work. PayPal transaction charges are also on the higher side and can significantly build up over time.

Perhaps the biggest reason why people are searching for PayPal alternatives is its uncertain behavior. Many PayPal accounts have been blocked or suspended for small issues, which has caused major losses for a number of PayPal users.

That being said, here are 7 payment services that you can use as PayPal alternatives on your WordPress site.

1. Stripe

Stripe

Stripe has quickly become the most popular PayPal alternative and one of the most popular payment gateways. Unfortunately, it is only available in select few countries.

The best part about using Stripe is lower fees, ease of use, and seamless integration into popular WordPress eCommerce platforms like WooCommerce and Shopify.

If you don’t want to setup a complete online store, then you can create a simple form with WPForms to collect payments via Stripe from your clients.

Stripe fees vary depending on which country you are in. For the United States, they have a fixed 2.9% + 30¢ fees for any successful credit card charge.

2. Transferwise

TransferWise

Transferwise allows your clients to pay you directly in your local currency. Your clients will be charged for the payment, and it will be sent to your bank account as a local transfer.

It is available in many countries and currencies. Transferwise fees vary depending on the location of both sender and receiver. However, we have found it to be often way lower than other payment services or a direct wire transfer. They also use the same exchange rate that you see on Google or XE, which also saves you additional money in currency exchange.

One downside is that Transferwise doesn’t allow business payments to be sent in some countries. Make sure to check the country page before requesting your clients to send you money for pricing and business payment status.

3. Bitcoin

Bitcoin

Cryptocurrencies are all the rage these days. Bitcoin is one of the first and the most well-known cryptocurrency in the world. Bitcoin also allows users to send and receive money across borders without the need for an intermediary such as a bank or a money transfer operator who takes a cut out of the transaction.

If your client is familiar with Bitcoin, then they can easily transfer money to your Bitcoin wallet. You can then convert this amount into local currency through a Bitcoin exchange, use the amount online, or transfer it to any other payment service.

Coinbase, a bitcoin trading platform, allows businesses to accept bitcoin payments. It is already being used by top companies like Expedia, Dell, Intuit, Wikimedia Foundation, and more.

4. Payoneer

Payoneer

Payoneer is a reliable name in the online payments industry. It is available in many countries around the world. There are currently no integrations available to connect it directly to your eCommerce or membership website. However, you can request clients to send payments via Payoneer.

Payoneer also makes it quite convenient to withdraw payments into your local bank account or use Payoneer branded debit card to withdraw payments from ATMs anywhere in the world. The downside is that their fees are higher compared to Stripe or PayPal, but lower than some other payment service providers.

For accepting credit card payments directly from clients, you will be charged 3% of the transaction amount. Additionally you will be charged $1.50 for local bank transfer in the same currency. If you are withdrawing amount in another currency account, then you will pay an additional 2% of the transaction amount.

5. Payza

Payza

Payza is a another popular PayPal alternative payment service. It is available in many countries and have integration addons available for some popular WordPress eCommerce plugins. Due to its availability in many countries, it is quickly becoming popular among freelancers.

Payza allows you to withdraw funds using wire transfer, bank transfer, Bitcoin, and through their Payza branded Mastercard.

Sending money through Payza is free, but withdrawing money is not so cheap. Depending on which withdrawal method you choose, you may end up paying quite a lot of your freelance earnings to Payza. For the United States, you will pay 2.90 % + $0.30 USD per transaction. Credit card payments will start at 5.49 % + $ 0.65 receiving fee.

6. 2Checkout

2Checkout

2Checkout is a one of the most known payment gateways and a good PayPal alternative. All popular eCommerce plugins for WordPress have addons to integrate 2Checkout as your payment gateway. You can also add it to your online store and start selling products to countries where Stripe or PayPal are not supported.

2Checkout offers different payment withdraw methods, and you can even integrate your Payoneer debit card to withdraw payments. Other notable features include recurring payments, hosted checkout experience, multiple currencies and languages support.

2Checkout charges differ depending on which country you are located in. For the United States, you will be charged 2.9% of the transaction amount + 30¢ on each transaction.

7. Google Wallet

Google Wallet

Google Wallet is another excellent option to replace PayPal for your payments. It is currently only available in the United States and the United Kingdom, and you cannot send payments from the US to UK. It doesn’t have an out of box integration available for any WordPress ecommerce platform.

Like many other Google tools and services, it does not charge any fees for sending or receiving money. This makes it a great option for freelancers who want to request client payments through Google Wallet.

We hope this article helped you find the best PayPal alternatives to collect payments in WordPress. You may also want to see our ultimate step by step WordPress security guide for beginners.

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.

The post 7 PayPal Alternatives for Freelancers to Collect Payments in WordPress appeared first on WPBeginner.

21 Best WordPress Themes for Nonprofit Organizations

17.11.2017best wordpress themes, Showcase, WordPress Themes, wordpress themes for donations, wordpress themes for environment, wordpress themes for ngos, wordpress themes for nonprofitsEditorial Staff

Are you looking for the best WordPress themes for nonprofits? Charity and non-profit websites require appealing presentation with tools to manage their donation goals. In this article, we will show you some of the best WordPress themes for nonprofits that will help you get maximum donations and achieve those goals.

Best WordPress themes for nonprofit organizations

Making a Website for a Nonprofit Organization

WordPress is the most popular website builder among nonprofits around the world. It is free and open source which gives you the freedom and flexibility you need for a solid online presence.

Just to be clear, there are two versions of WordPress. WordPress.com which is a hosted solution, and WordPress.org also known as self-hosted WordPress. See our comparison of WordPress.com vs WordPress.org for more details.

We recommend using self hosted WordPress.org. It gives you access to all the features of WordPress right out of the box (without any restrictions).

You’ll need a domain name and WordPress hosting account to start your self hosted WordPress website.

We recommend using Bluehost. They are one of the largest hosting companies in the world and an official WordPress recommended hosting provider.

They have agreed to offer WPBeginner users discount on hosting plus free domain and SSL Certificate. You’ll need SSL to collect donations in WordPress using third-party services like Stripe.

→ Click here to claim this exclusive Bluehost Offer ←

Once you have purchased hosting, you can move on to installing WordPress. See our guide on how to make a website for step by step instructions.

That being said, let’s take a look at the best WordPress themes for nonprofits and charities that you can use on your website.

1. Philanthropy

Philanthropy is a WordPress theme designed specifically for nonprofits and charitable organizations. It features an impressive design with integrated donations and fundraising system.

It includes three slider styles to create a stunning first impression. It places call to actions on strategic locations to maximize user engagement. Other features include an integrated event management system, calendar, Google Maps, unlimited customization options, and a powerful drag and drop page builder.

2. Outreach Pro

Outreach Pro is beautifully designed WordPress theme for nonprofits, charities, and religious organizations. It is built on top of Genesis framework, which ensures rock solid WordPress speed and performance.

It includes page templates for archives, blog section, and a landing page template. Other features include customizable headers, theme options panel, and multiple widget ready areas to just drag and drop items to your website.

3. Creed

Creed is a stunningly beautiful WordPress theme for religious, nonprofits, and charities. It is part of a larger theme bundle and includes 23 ready-made websites, integrated page builder, and 1-click demo installer.

It includes donations, event management, photo galleries, unlimited colors, and multiple layout choices. It is super easy to use with a custom theme options panel to walk you through setup process.

4. Charity Foundation

Charity Foundation is a WordPress fundraising theme for nonprofits and charities. It comes with built-in system to accept one-time or recurring donations and WooCommerce support to add online store for your charity.

It includes 9 custom post types, 15 custom widgets, multiple layout combinations, and a ready-to-use child theme. It is easy to use and has a custom theme settings page.

5. Hope

Hope is a super-flexible WordPress theme for NGOs, churches, and charitable foundations. It includes dozens of readymade designs that can be installed with 1-click. All templates can be easily customized with a visual page builder.

It comes with donations, event management, and contact form integrations. It is super easy to setup and optimized for SEO and performance.

6. Social Welfare

Social Welfare is a beautiful WordPress theme for fundraising, NGOs, and charities. It includes a modern homepage layout with beautiful CSS animations and parallax background effects.

It ships with a premium slider plugin and a visual page builder. It is easy to setup with 1-click demo installer and a simple theme settings panel.

7. Nayma

Nayma is a thoughtfully designed multipurpose WordPress theme with several ready-made websites included into one package. It includes 1-click installer to setup your website complete with demo content.

It uses a modular approach to design and comes with several modules that you can just drag and drop to create your own page layouts. It is WooCommerce ready and can also be used to create multilingual websites.

8. Zeko

Zeko is a wonderfully designed WordPress theme for charities and nonprofits. It features a clean and professional design with flexible options. All theme options can be easily setup using theme customizer with a live preview of your website.

Notable features include 5 page templates, blog with multi-column grid and flexible sidebars, unlimited colors, WooCommerce, BuddyPress, and bbPress support.

9. Grassroots

Grassroots is another excellent WordPress themes for nonprofits and fundraising websites. It features fullscreen video backgrounds on the homepage allowing you to create highly engaging landing pages.

For fundraising and donations, the theme supports WooCommerce, contact form, and donation plugins. Other notable features include featured content, staff and sponsors sections, custom logo upload, and multiple colors.

10. Hope

Hope is another great WordPress theme for nonprofits, fundraisers, and charity websites. It features a modern homepage with a call to action in the header followed by social profiles, navigation menus, and a full width slider.

It includes events and organizers post types, contact form page, shortcodes, and more. You can easily setup and modify theme settings using the live theme customizer.

11. Forward

Forward is a simple and elegant WordPress theme designed specifically for nonprofits. It allows you to easily add your own logo, colors, fonts, and more. It includes all the options you’ll need to build an engaging website.

Other notable features include WooCommerce support, email signup form, staff profiles, sponsors, and live theme customizer support. It easy and quick to setup even for absolute beginners.

12. Maisha

Maisha is a clean and modern WordPress nonprofit theme for NGOs, welfare, and charities. It features a modern homepage with multiple slider styles, headers, and layout settings. It also includes 15 page templates, blog section, and powerful options with live theme customizer.

It supports WooCommerce, WPML, and it is fully translation-ready. It ships with Soliloquy which is the best WordPress slider.

13. Foundation

Foundation is another excellent WordPress nonprofit theme. Designed to raise funds and engage audiences, it features a prominent welcome message followed by two call to actions both located above the fold on the homepage.

It includes social media integration, custom logo upload, sponsors section, and easy templates to integrate with your donations form. It offers a simple and quick setup with easy customization options.

14. Maranatha

Maranatha is a gorgeous WordPress theme for religious, spirtual, and nonprofit organizations. It comes with built-in sermons management area where you can upload audio, video, PDF, and text files. You can also organize your library in series by topics and books.

Its modern homepage displays a full screen image or video header followed by parallax effect as users scroll down the homepage. It also comes with sections for different locations, events calendar, and news or blog page.

15. Benevolent

If you are looking for a free WordPress theme for nonprofits, then take a look at Benevolent. This versatile theme features a modern homepage with beautiful slider, custom menu, and call to action button.

It has four footer area and a right sidebar and includes four custom widgets for the recent posts, popular posts, social media and the featured post. It is also translation ready and optimized for faster page loads.

16. Ultra

Ultra is an all-purpose WordPress mega theme suitable for all kind of websites including nonprofits. It ships with 9 pre-made websites, 1-click demo content installer, and visual page editor to help you create engaging websites in minutes.

It includes animated counters, progress bars, contact form, Google Maps, pricing tables, and more. It is eCommerce ready and beginner friendly.

17. Exodus

Exodus is a beautiful WordPress theme for religious and spiritual organizations. It features a professional homepage with engaging slider and call to action. It also includes a sermon management section with full multimedia support.

It also has sections to add ministries, staff and volunteer profiles, events, locations, etc. It is designed to be easily used even by non-technical users with simple and flexible customization settings.

18. Charity Review

Charity Review is another excellent free WordPress nonprofit theme for NGOs, church websites, and charitable organizations. With a professional clean design and flexible options, it offers an engaging user experience out of the box.

Notable features include custom menu, social media integration, call to action block, banner slider, testimonial sections, and more. It has multiple page layouts for different sections. All theme options are neatly organized under live theme customizer, which makes it quite simple to use.

19. Pena

Pena is a flexible WordPress theme for nonprofit organizations. It is designed to help you raise funds with an visually appealing presentation. It offers multiple slider layouts, header styles, and homepage layout settings to help you create a unique experience for your visitors.

It has 12 page templates, WooCommerce support, donation forms support, email subscriptions, and more. It offers a neat setup process with extensive settings to fine tune each aspect of your website.

20. Saved

Saves offers a very modern looking WordPress theme for religious and nonprofit organizations. It includes a drag and drop homepage layout, video background, slider, and contact details widget with Google maps.

Church websites can use the Theme’s companion church content plugin, which adds sermons and multimedia library support to your website. It also includes sticky navigation menu, custom colors, custom widgets, typography, and custom logo support.

21. The Core

The Core is a mega pack of multiple ready-made WordPress themes for all kind of individuals and organizations. Any of these designs can be installed with 1-click including demo content. To make it even more easier, each of these design can be easily edited with the built-in visual page editor.

It offers unlimited design possibilities with countless combinations of header styles, layout types, beautiful animations and scrolling effects. It also comes with a powerful custom theme options page with simple on/off buttons to add or remove features you want to use. It is super easy and helps beginners create professional websites with minimal effort.

We hope this article helped you find the best WordPress theme for nonprofits. You may also want to see our step by step WordPress SEO guide for beginners and a list of must have WordPress plugins.

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.

The post 21 Best WordPress Themes for Nonprofit Organizations appeared first on WPBeginner.

22 Best WordPress Themes for Life Coaches

10.11.2017best wordpress themes, Showcase, WordPress Themes, wordpress themes for life coaches, wordpress themes for motivational speakersEditorial Staff

Are you looking for the best WordPress themes for life coaches? If so, then you need a WordPress theme that helps you promote your personal brand and builds trust. In this article, we will show you the best WordPress themes for life coaches, speakers, and consultants.

Best WordPress themes for life coaches

Building a Life Coaching Website with WordPress

WordPress is the top platform used by many prominent public speakers and life coaches around the world. Mainly because of its flexibility and ease of use.

There are two versions of WordPress. WordPress.com and WordPress.org also known as self-hosted WordPress. (See our comparsion of WordPress.com vs WordPress.org for more details).

A self-hosted WordPress.org website gives you access to all the features of WordPress right out of the box, and this is what we recommend everyone to use.

You will need a domain name and a WordPress hosting account to start your own self-hosted WordPress website.

We recommend using Bluehost. They are one of the largest hosting companies in the world and an officially recommended WordPress hosting provider. They’re offering our users a free domain name and over 60% off hosting.

Once you have signed up for a hosting account. The next step is to install WordPress. You can follow the instructions in our step by step guide on how to make a website.

That being said, let’s take a look at some of the best WordPress themes for life coaches. This list contains both free and paid WordPress themes, and all of them are mobile friendly.

1. Ultra

Ulta is an all-purpose WordPress theme suitable to build professional life coaching, motivational speaker, and mentorship websites. It comes with several ready-made website templates that can be installed with one click. It also includes a drag and drop page builder to edit those pages and create new pages as needed.

It ships with a wide range of design and layout choices. Inside you will also find an easy to use testimonials section, photo galleries, sliders, contact forms, and more.

2. One Page Business Pro

One Page Business Pro is a one page WordPress theme for all kind of business websites including life coaches, speakers, and trainers. It comes with easy to manage sections all displayed on the same page with vertical navigation.

It includes beautiful full width header image followed by different sections including testimonials slider, team and portfolio section. It is very easy to use and can be setup using the custom theme options panel.

3. Emerald CV

Emerald CV is a stylish WordPress resume theme with a focus on personal branding. It has a full width header on top with profile photo, short bio, and a call to action button.

It includes easy to manage sections to add your experience, skills, portfolio, with animated progress bars and custom widgets. It is easy to set up and includes several customization features that will help you make it uniquely yours.

4. Get Noticed

Get Noticed is a premium WordPress theme designed to establish and promote your personal brand. It is one of the expensive WordPress themes in the list, but you’ll love how easy to use it is and how everything just works out of the box.

Our company’s founder and CEO, Syed Balkhi uses Get Noticed on his personal website.

5. Freelancer

Freelancer is another beautiful WordPress theme designed to promote your personal brand. Despite the name, it is perfectly suitable for life coaches, motivational speakers, and anyone looking to promote and establish authority in their industry.

It can be used both as one page theme or a multi-page theme. It includes easy to add sections to display your expertise and skills with a custom theme options panel, photo galleries, portfolio and more.

6. Saturn

Saturn is a WordPress theme for professionals, life coaches, and public figures. It comes with 3 different layout templates, each featuring a beautiful slider on the top and a modular homepage layout.

Other features include photo galleries, contact form, parallax background, Google Maps, and more. It includes a theme customization panel which helps you setup your website.

7. OneEngine

OneEngine is one-page multipurpose WordPress theme suitable for all kind of professional websites. It features beautiful design with bold color choices and beautiful parallax background effects.

It can be used as a single page template with separate blog section. It allows you to easily add an intro or bio section, services, portfolio, and team member sections. It includes a custom theme options panel which helps you easily modify your website.

8. Parallax

Parallax is a modern WordPress business theme featuring engaging parallax backgrounds, fullscreen background images, and a stunning layout. It comes with 60+ predefined layouts and a page builder which allows you to mix and match design elements to create a unique experience for your visitors.

It has built-in social media widgets, contact form integration, progress bars, beautiful CSS animations, and more. It is also translation ready and can be used to create multilingual websites as well.

9. Profile

As the name suggests, Profile is a personal website WordPress theme for professionals like life coaches, consultants, and designers. It features a full width header image with a custom logo upload, navigation menu, and a profile photo.

Other notable features include page templates, shortcodes, featured videos, WooCommerce and contact form support.

10. Sixteen Nine Pro

Built on top of Genesis theme framework, Sixteen Nine is a beautiful WordPress theme for personal websites. It features a three column layout with one column used as a header section with profile photo and navigation menus.

It has a customizable header area, two widget ready areas, multiple page templates, and more. It has a super easy to use theme options panel and live theme customizer support.

11. Creartivo

Creativo is a multi-purpose WordPress theme for creative professionals, artists, life coaches and consultants. It ships with multiple ready-made website templates that can be installed with 1-click. It ships with a drag and drop page builder which allows you to create your own WordPress page layouts.

It includes booking form support, online store integration, custom widgets, multiple styles and templates, custom widgets, beautiful featured content slider. It is easy to use and has a theme options panel to setup your website.

12. Personal Page

As the name suggests Personal Page is a WordPress theme to promote your personal brand as a life coach, freelancer, or consultant. It features bold design choices like larger fonts, bright colors, and large images.

It includes a bio template where you can list your biography, stats, experience, testimonials and more. It is easy to use and includes a theme settings page and live theme customizer support.

13. Spencer

Spencer is a beautifully crafted WordPress theme for entrepreneurs, motivational speakers, life coaches, and bloggers. It features a fully widgetized homepage layout allowing you to just drag and drop widgets to set it up.

It includes separate templates for about, landing page, contact form, and blog section. It is easy to customize and works with all popular page builder plugins.

14. Presence

Presence is an all-purpose WordPress theme designed for businesses and individuals. It ships with 10 demos with 1-click installer and 6 color schemes.

Other notable features include built-in portfolio, testimonials, custom widgets, page templates, and more. It is compatible with multilingual websites using WPML and can also be used to add an online store.

15. Indigo

Indigo is a super-flexible WordPress theme that can be used to build any kind of website. It ships with 14 ready-made website templates that are fully editable with simple drag and drop modules.

Inside you will find tons of easy to use options to add contact forms, testimonials, sliders, image galleries, Google Maps, and more. It has beautiful theme options page that will make it easier for you to quickly build your website.

16. Smart Passive Income

Smart Passive Income is another excellent theme for life coaches, consultants, and professionals. It has an easy to setup and fully widgetized homepage layout.

Inside you will find customizable header, multiple layout choices, multiple widget ready areas, and more. It is translation ready, supports WooCommerce, and includes full theme customizer support.

17. iCoach

iCoach is a free WordPress theme for life coach, motivational speakers, freelancers, and other professionals. Designed to showcase your personal brand, this theme features a beautiful slider, parallax effects, and a professional homepage.

You can easily customize theme colors, header, background image, and more using live theme customizer. It is translation ready and compatible with all top WordPress plugins.

18. Author Pro

Author Pro is an elegant WordPress theme for authors, life coaches, speakers, and other professionals. It is designed to put your personal brand in front and center of your website. Built on Genesis framework, it is highly optimized for speed and performance.

It includes custom headers, background, widgetized home page, and a powerful theme options panel. It ships with Genesis Author Plugin which allows you to list your books and sell ebooks online.

19. Online Coach

Online Coach is a free WordPress theme designed specifically for life coaches, trainers, and instructors. It can be used to build a membership website to sell online courses with an LMS WordPress plugin.

It is easy to use with only the options you will need. For customization it uses live theme customizer to change colors, set up header images, background color, and more.

20. Float

Float is another multi-purpose WordPress theme for professionals. It comes with a drag and drop page builder with unlimited layout choices, header styles, and colors. It also includes ready-made demos that you can install and use as a starting point.

It has built-in social media integration, parallax blog layout, contact form, photo galleries, and filterable portfolio. Its flexibility and ease of use makes it perfect to build your life coaching website in minutes.

21. Reel Story

Reel Story is a WordPress video theme suitable for websites with lots of video content. It comes with a video portfolio section and multiple layouts and unlimited color choices.

It includes a simple drag and drop page builder, a powerful theme options panel, and 1-click demo installer. All these tools make it super easy to create highly engaging websites in very little time.

22. Authority Pro

Authority is the perfect WordPress theme to build your online authority. It features a clean modern layout with a large header image, welcome message, and a email subscription form at the top.

It is easier to setup with a widgetized homepage layout. It includes 4 widget ready areas, two navigation menus, and a unique vertical navigation menu.

We hope this article helped you find the best WordPress themes for life coaches, motivational speakers, and consultants. You may also want to see our guide on how to build your personal brand using WordPress.

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.

The post 22 Best WordPress Themes for Life Coaches appeared first on WPBeginner.

26 Best WordPress Themes for Graphic Designers

20.10.2017best wordpress themes, graphic design themes for wordpress, Showcase, WordPress Themes, wordpress themes for graphic designersEditorial Staff

Are you looking for the best WordPress themes for graphic designers? For a graphic design website, you may be looking for something creative and inspiring. Typical blog or business templates often do not meet the criteria. In this guide, we have hand-picked the best WordPress themes for graphic designers that are both functional and creative.

Best WordPress themes for graphic designers

Creating a Graphic Design Website with WordPress

WordPress is the best website builder for artists, designers, and creative folks. It offers great flexibility and freedoms to match your artistic expression.

There are two different types of WordPress. A self hosted WordPress.org website gives you access to all features of WordPress. See our comparison of WordPress.com vs WordPress.org for more details.

You will need a WordPress hosting account and a domain name to use self hosted WordPress.

We recommend using Bluehost. They are an officially recommended WordPress hosting provider and one of the largest web hosting companies in the world.

Once you have purchased hosting. Head over to our guide on how to make a website for step by step installation instructions.

Having said that, let’s take a look at the best WordPress themes for graphic designers that you can use on your website.

1. Creativo

Creativo is an all-purpose WordPress theme with 11 ready-made websites that can be installed with 1-click. These demo websites include one for creative professionals and another one for agencies. Each one of these templates can be completely customized using a premium drag and drop builder plugin that ships free with the theme.

It includes an easy to use custom theme options dashboard which helps you easily set up your website. It includes tons of templates, a blog section, custom widgets, and unlimited colors.

2. Meteor

Designed to build portfolio and resume websites, Meteor is the perfect theme for graphic designers. Its main feature would be the masonry grid layout for your portfolio items at the front.

Each portfolio item has its own details page where you can add more videos, image galleries, description, and more. It also comes with a resume template to showcase your qualifications and experience to prospective clients.

3. Soho

Soho is a WordPress art gallery theme which can easily repurposed for graphic design galleries and exhibitions. It includes sections to display upcoming events, artists, a blog section, exhibitions, and contact form.

It includes features like custom columns, buttons, tables, panels, icon fonts, and more. It is easy to set up and includes a simple theme options panel and full live customizer support.

4. Lense

Lense is a beautiful WordPress theme suitable for graphic designers, artists, and photographers. It includes 6 beautiful photo gallery layouts including horizontal scrolling, sliders, and multi-column masonry grids.

Despite its minimalist design, Lense gives you full control to use any colors, add widgets, and create custom layouts with page builder of your choice. It is super easy to use and customize and has a powerful theme options panel.

5. Kanop

Kanop is another gorgeous WordPress theme for graphic designers, artists, and creative professionals. Its homepage features a masonry grid layout with a welcome message at the top.

It is super easy to use and includes 1-click demo installer, custom theme settings page, and drag and drop page builder. It ships with a premium WordPress slider plugin and full support for multilingual websites using WPML.

6. Pepper+

Pepper+ is a beautifully crafted WordPress theme for designers and artists. It takes a modular approach to design and allows you to create any kind of website using simple drag and drop modules.

It ships with 4 ready-made websites that can be installed with 1-click. These websites include one designed specifically for individual artists. Other notable features include beautiful typography, icon fonts, contact form and more.

7. Kansas

Kansas is a minimalist WordPress theme for graphic designers, photographers, and artists. It comes with a spacious layout with lots of white space and crisp typography.

It is easy to setup with demo installer and a custom theme settings panel. It includes a filterable portfolio, image galleries, unlimited colors, and custom widgets.

8. Agency Pro

Agency Pro is a powerful WordPress theme for graphic design agencies. It features gorgeous full screen background image with your featured work and recent posts on the homepage.

It is designed for Genesis theme framework, which is built for speed and performance. Other features include custom page templates, widgetized homepage, customizable header, and more.

9. Martho

Martho is a powerful yet minimalist WordPress theme for artists, designers, and photographers. It comes with beautiful portfolio templates to easily showcase your best work.

It ships with page builder and slider plugins. Other features include photo galleries, featured content carousels, social media sharing, WooCommerce support, and more.

10. Vogue

Vogue is a modern WordPress theme designed for fashion, designers, artists, and photographers. Its refreshing design uses lots of white space which breathes new life into your images.

It includes a beautiful slider on the homepage, followed by your content. Inside you’ll also find custom widgets for social media profiles, Instagram widget, popular posts, and contact form popup.

11. Verb

Verb is designed specifically for graphic designers, illustrators, and photographers. This beautiful WordPress theme comes with a powerful portfolio section. Each portfolio item has a detailed page where you can add more details.

Other notable features include crisp typography, lightbox popup for galleries, color picker, full width page template, and more. It is easy to use and comes with a getting started dashboard to help you set up your website.

12. Hellomouse

Hellomouse is a creative WordPress theme for graphic designers, artists, and illustrators. Designed for great first impression it puts your latest work at the front and center of your website. This will help you generate more leads and get more work.

It is quicker to setup and easier to customize with more than 60 options in customizer. Other notable features include custom widgets for social media and content discovery, full width page templates, and page builder support.

13. Monochrome

If you are looking for an ultra minimalist option, then you’ll love Monochrome. This Genesis child theme uses lots of white space and beautifully displays your images.

It includes a simpler theme options panel and live customizer support. The homepage layout is fully widgetized and you can just drag and drop widgets to set it up. It is also ecommerce ready and can be easily used to add an online store to your site.

14. Candid

Candid is a WordPress theme for story-tellers, designers, and artists. It allows you to combine your artwork with text to create compelling content that looks great and inspires you to create more.

It includes social icons menu, contact page, lightbox galleries, and background color picker. It is designed to work out of the box and includes only the options you’ll need. It even includes a getting started section which will help you go live in minutes.

15. True North

True North is a stylish WordPress theme suitable for graphic designers, illustrators, and photographers. It comes with a built-in portfolio section where you can easily upload your work samples with descriptions and case studies.

Its homepage features a grid layout to display your work at the front and center of your website. It includes custom backgrounds and headers, custom widgets for social media profiles and content discovery features, and a powerful theme options page.

16. Designer

Designer is WordPress theme to quickly showcase your artwork, web design, photography, and more. It is super easy to use and includes minimal theme options which makes it quick to setup.

It includes a powerful portfolio post type with gorgeous templates to display each portfolio item with as much detail as you like. Other features include photo galleries, lightbox carousel, video popups, social media icons, and more.

17. Resume

Resume is a WordPress theme to build personal portfolio or resume website. It features a modern homepage layout allowing you to beautifully showcase your skills, experience, and portfolio on the front.

It includes a beautiful about me section which allows you to add bio, show awards and recognition, and more. It includes custom widgets for social media, filterable portfolio, featured content slider, and powerful theme settings page.

18. Corner

Corner is another great minimalist WordPress theme for designers and creative folks. It features a two column layout with navigation menu and sidebar on the left.

It includes a featured work slider, custom widgets, social media icons, unlimited colors, and ecommerce support. It comes with a powerful theme options panel and support for all popular page builders plugins.

19. Hamilton

Hamilton is a free minimalist WordPress theme for creative types. This elegant portfolio theme allows you to display posts in a beautiful grid layout using your featured images as thumbnails.

The homepage grid can be set up using two or three column layout. It comes in two color schemes light and dark. You can also use custom background colors.

20. Nico

Nico is a WordPress theme for artists and designers. Its homepage comes in a two column layout with sidebar on the left and a grid of your latest work on the right. The latest work grid can be configured to use three, or even four columns.

It includes a filterable portfolio post type to easily showcase your best work. It comes in different color schemes and you can also create your own. All theme options are quite easy to use and setup.

21. Couture

Couture is a free WordPress theme suitable for fashion, photography, and design blogs. It features an elegant and simple layout with your custom logo on the top, navigation menus, followed by your recent posts grid.

It is really simple to use and works out of the box. You will find familiar customization options under live theme customizer.

22. Creatica

As the name suggests Creatica is a WordPress theme for creatives, agencies, and artists. It comes with 14 ready-made demos including templates for agencies, freelancers, resume, and portfolios. You can install these demos with a single click and then use the page builder plugin to customize them.

It comes with powerful theme options panel which helps you set up your website. It includes tons of customization options including social media integration, multiple header styles, custom widgets, unlimited colors and layout choices.

23. Peak

Peak is a modern and stylish WordPress theme for photographers and creatives. Boasting a masonry tiles layout, Peak can automatically populate tiles from your posts with each tile size generated dynamically. You can also generate your own tile sizes if you want.

Peak comes with a built-in portfolio post type, mega menus, slide out widgets, page title banner, custom 404 error page, and full WooCommerce support.

We hope this article helped you find the best WordPress themes for graphic designers. You may also want to see our ultimate step by step WordPress SEO guide for beginners.

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